New Fish Species Discovered 4.5 Miles Under the Ocean

eldavojohn writes "The University of Aberdeen's Oceanlab (a partner in the recent census of marine life) has discovered a new snailfish. That might not sound very exciting, unless you consider that its habitat is an impressive four and a half miles below the ocean's surface (video). If my calculations are correct, that's over ten and a half thousand PSI, or about seventy-three million Pascals. The videos and pictures are a couple years old, as the team has traveled around Japan, South America and New Zealand to ascertain the biodiversity of these depths. The group hopes to eventually bring specimens to the surface. It seems the deepest parts of the ocean, once thought to be devoid of life, are actually home to some organisms. As researchers build better technology for underwater exploration, tales of yore containing unimaginable monsters seem a little more realistic than before."

Comments

About seventy-three million Pascals

[Anonymous Coward]

Or over 3.6 trillion Cobols.

Re:About seventy-three million Pascals

[LynnwoodRooster]

Or, as any seasoned coder would tell you, a single line of C.

Sounds like..

[nilbog]

Sounds like this snail works well ...
...

(puts sunglasses on)
...

under pressure.
...

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa......

(Sorry I seem to have gotten lost on my way to reddit...)

Depth is irrelevant.

[BitZtream]

Stop thinking about it like what would happen to you at that depth because thats not what happens.

Everything in the body of the fish formed at that pressure, which means it doesn't really feel the pressure. Your body didn't. Its internal pressure is about 14psi, if you took it down there, it would be crushed until it reached equilibrium with the outside pressure.

Likewise, if your brought the fish to the surface, or tried to, it would literally explode before it got to the surface as the internal pressure would be too great for its cells to contain.

You can see the same thing if you pull a fish up from even 150 feet too quickly, its eyeballs will pop out of its skull and its internal organs sometimes pushed out of its mouth.

We need to stop thinking that theres something special about life at these pressures or depths like its rare. We've known for 50 years there are fish down deeper than that, there were fish at the bottom of the Marianas trench, this one is slightly more than HALF that deep.

When you are born at such pressures, anything else seems insane ... kind of like going into space without a space suit, which is pretty much what the fish would need to survive at the surface since its body is designed to operate at much higher pressures.

Re:Depth is irrelevant.

[jjohnson]

What is their food source?

Apparently there's a steady rain of nutrition from above, basically. Feces, skin cells, plant material, cast off crap... they live in a constant of surface particles wending their way down, much of which is edible to them.

How did their species evolve to make sure they were born with the same internal pressure?

You don't decide to be born at the same internal pressure as your parents, any that you, the poster, decided to be born as an oxygen breathing mammal. Fish at that pressure necessarily breed more fish at the same pressure--any who leave the safe pressure zone die rather than breed. How did you decide not to be born underwater? Your parents avoiding death by drowning in order to give birth to you.

Re:Depth is irrelevant.

[blair1q]

Obligatory Mythbusters reference.

Not for years

[DerekLyons]

" It seems the deepest parts of the ocean, once thought to be devoid of life, are actually home to some organisms."

Do we really have to hear this every effing time a new deep sea species is discovered? The deeps haven't been thought of as being devoid of life for decades, if ever.

Wow that's amazing

[NotSoHeavyD3]

A fish that can live in solid rock. (I know, you meant 4.5 miles under the surface of the ocean.)